1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of digital content file distribution. Additionally, the invention relates to protecting the ownership rights in digital information, providing for authorized distribution of the digital information to consumers, and protecting against unauthorized distribution.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of the Internet and the World Wide Web as tools for content delivery and e-commerce has increased dramatically in recent years. As a consequence, the delivery of digital content materials, for example music, videos, software, books, multi-media presentations, images, and other electronic media, over a network to one or more consumers has likewise increased dramatically. Users may download such digital content files legitimately from a content provider, for example a record label such as Sony Records or Capitol Records, or inappropriately from one of the content download services without the permission of the copyright owner. Using a network such as the Internet, users may, and quite frequently do, transfer digital media files they have downloaded, whether legitimately or otherwise, to others.
In this way, consumers of digital content information may simply and freely distribute such media information over a public network such as the Internet without the permission of the copyright owner (or other property rights owners). Such consumers who inappropriately distribute copyright material over public networks cannot currently be positively identified, if they can even be tracked down at all. Therefore, these consumers can quite often successfully deny culpability.
A prevalent concern within the media publishing and/or distribution business is that the supply vs demand equation that drives the economics of valuable goods and services no longer applies to digital content. Since a digital media file such as a music or movie file can be duplicated essentially an unlimited number of times and distributed at virtually no cost, the economics for providing such digital materials to the public is not viable. In order to return the supply versus demand equation back to the digital media domain, individual digital media files must be configured in such a way as to give them properties similar to physical objects. With such physical properties, these files can be handled and monitored in ways that are similar to physical objects, thus allowing the return of the necessary economic incentives and viability.
Although encryption schemes have provided solutions to other problems involving digital media content, it is not a viable answer to the problem of identifying and monitoring content files. Consumers might possibly have embraced encryption of digital media files had it been introduced on a large scale before the Napster file-sharing model. Consumers generally will learn to accept models that add a level of complexity if these models are in fact the only models available. However, the complexities that content distributors would like to introduce into the market with encryption will arrive after the superior model has been introduced. This will likely result in media content file protection schemes such as encryption and copy protection disappearing over time.